You know, back in the day rap lyrics were clever. Rhymes stretched vocabulary and the imagination. These days anything goes. And anything coming out of the mouths of big name hip-hoppers (or company hired producers) frequently has more to do with generating controversy and bad taste than with anything of analytical substance.

Today, many members of the Afrosphere Action Coalition and others are speaking out in unison against the increasingly reckless use of tasers. Here are some examples that illustrate the problem:
- 21-year old black man tasered nine times by Louisiana cop. Although he stopped twitching after seven, Baron Pikes was tasered to death.
- Policeman indicted in case of 17-year old black man tasered-to-death by North Carolina cop.
- Deaf black man tasered-in-error by Kansas cop.
- Unarmed and naked 41-year old black man tasered-to-death by Florida cop.
- Black man tasered-while-driving-mother-to-Thanksgiving-Dinner by Texas cop.
Did …

I apologize for posts coming a little slowly for the past month or so. Preparing for the big move on July 4th, Blogging While Brown and for the business conference I am attending right now has been a little distracting. Next week, we’re gonna get back into “it” full tilt, so fasten your seat belts.
In the meantime, there are important stories that I’ve not addressed here. I want to make sure you don’t miss them. So please follow the links below for the latest news you won’t find on cable.
An …

I like this video. Thought I’d share it with you.

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV
Gina has clipped video from the live stream taped during my presentation- ‘Secrets of a media insider: How to make news and make the news work for you’.
Wayne Hicks’ (Villager’s) presentation on ‘Umoja’ and black blogs follows right after.
Check out both if you have time. If you are a blogger, you will find both presentations informative.

Have you ever done “start up”? I mean have you ever been at the very beginning of a new organization, something that required the earliest participants to take a leap of faith that others would eventually step to offer support, too? If you have, count yourself lucky. It is a powerful experience to watch over time as that once “new” entity morphs into “established.” And once it is established, it seems like it has always been there.

Greetings from Atlanta and the first Blogging While Brown!
I am listening to an accessible and extremely informative presentation by Angela Conyers-Benton and Markus Robinson of BlackWeb20.com. Seated on my left, also taking everything in are Pam of Pam’s House Blend, Wayne Hicks of Electronic Village and Shawn P. Williams of Dallas South blog. Last night I was able to meet and greet with Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report and CBC Monitor, Maurice Cherry of Black Weblog Awards and the inimitable, activist engine Gina McCauley among others. So great.
It is …

I watched Part One. And besides not understanding why the interstitial set ups featured an…ahem…distinctively dressed black man rhyming, I thought it was a satisfactory overview of some of the issues that many black people, and Americans of all colors, are thinking about.
As in all cable and television network news programs, the show never grabbed for the heart of the matters, so to speak. I mean, where was any display of real anger about the state of things? Everybody was simply bemoaning the problems. For example, I was waiting for …

I write about race because my love for America, for the promise of her expressed principles, compels me to do so. As I experience it, racism is America’s gangrene. There are times when affected extremities have been treated with low grade antibiotics, but collectively we have never been able to excise the rotted flesh from the body politic. Instead for the most part, we drag the infected along, pretend not to notice its stench, all the while periodically tightening the tourniquet, quite sure that cutting off flow to the problem …

From My post at AOL Black Voices/BlackSpin:
I don’t live in a different world from any other American. But I experience that world as an individual, through the prism of my identity which consists of many elements including “race” as the concept has manifested in this country. As a black woman, I don’t see the world as a white male or white woman does. Another example, as an able bodied woman, my experiences are different from a disabled person’s. It would be uninformed for me to presume that although I am …

The most talented spoken word artists, or “rhymecologists,” proffer clever, vocabulary acrobatics as observations about the way we live in the world. They spit unexpected couplings, laying them down, end to end, from the beginning to the send. They lay bare naked truth for you to hear and see and feel.

The tightest lyrics provoke thought, pain and laughter. And when the performance is over your mind and heart are worked out from riding the gymnastic gyrations of verbal uneven parallel bars.
‘GV7 Random Urban Static’ is a documentary I watched over …

I believe Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s tears yesterday on “The View” were sincere. I believe she seeks racial harmony in our country and so do I. Further, it’s my hunch that hundreds of thousands of people, many of them white, were nodding along as she expressed her passionate belief that the constant use of the ‘n-word’ in pop culture makes it more difficult to get to a better, more racially understanding society.
I think she’s right. I hate the ‘n-word’ when anybody uses it. But let me be very clear about my opinion …

Yes. And Wright (pictured on the right) was prone on his stomach at the time.
According to tmz.com
Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, who were arrested this past weekend at a Shreveport, La. bar, were pepper sprayed and tased by cops. And, we’re told, police went on a vulgar rant — and portions were caught on cell phone video.
The incident occurred during a wrap party for Oliver Stone’s movie “W” about the Prez. Local station KTBS reports and TMZ sources say Wright, who plays Colin Powell, was repeatedly tasered and pepper …

The pro-Migrant bloggers over at the The Sanctuary website are making national news by trying to do a very difficult thing: keep Obama and McCain honest about their immigration agenda. It seems that in an effort to catch the majority of the ever growing “Latino vote,” Obama and McCain are flip flopping all over themselves, changing what they say depending on what audience they are speaking to.
So in June, the folks at The Sanctuary made a basic request; they asked each candidate to respond to a 38 Question Candidate Survey. …

I find THE cover appalling.

But, frankly, I can’t get around the pitch. Did it go like this?:
Barry Blitt, cover artist: “I have this great idea for a cover promoting that 18 page intricately detailed piece chronicling Obama’s extraordinary political skill and savvy.”
David Remnick, ‘New Yorker’ Editor: “Great! Shoot.”
Blitt: “Okay, picture the Oval Office, but instead of George Washington’s portrait above the mantel, we’ve got Osama Bin Laden’s.”
Remnick: “UmmHmmm. I’m with you, keep going.”
Blitt: “Well, next, we’ve got a fire going in the fireplace and guess what’s cookin’? The American …